Mad Men Q&A: John Slattery

Dodgy Roger: John Slattery as *Mad Men'*s great hedonist, Roger Sterling.
John Slattery plays the unapologetically sybaritic Roger Sterling, one of two named partners at the Sterling Cooper ad agency and arguably Mad Men’s least conflicted character. Last month, Slattery was nominated for an Emmy for his work on the series’ eventful second season, during which Roger left his wife for Don Draper’s secretary. As it happens, Mrs. Sterling is played by Talia Balsam, Slattery’s wife in real life. We spoke over breakfast in a homey restaurant not far from his apartment in Tribeca.

John Slattery: I read the pilot and thought it was different than most of the stuff that I had been looking at. I was asked to come in and read for the part of Don Draper, which was really the biggest draw. So I really did prepare the thing and went in and I worked hard on it and then read for Don and they actually gave me adjustments and I went and I did it again. And then they sort of said, “Well, look, here’s the deal. We have a guy. The reason we asked you to come in and read for Draper is because we didn’t think that you’d come in a read for Roger because there wasn’t that much Roger in the script.” So I was a little disappointed. I really liked the script, but I was less enthused now because I didn’t see the character on the page. And so many times you get told one thing and it turns out to be disappointing—you know, you’re just a fifth banana in something and you’re stuck because it’s TV and you signed a long contract. So I was wary [about playing Roger]. I was on the fence a little bit, even while shooting it. And I think Matt finally was like, “Look man, we’re not jerking you around here. We’re serious about this and I’ve really thought this out. I promise you this will be a great character and it will be a big part of the show.” But, you know, you hedge your bets emotionally, maybe. You think, well, all right, just in case this thing does turn out to be disappointing, I’m not really going to invest myself in it. I mean, I did my job. I did the scenes as well as I could. I didn’t tank it or anything, but, ah…

One thing that’s interesting to me about Roger is that he’s arguably the least conflicted character on the show. Roger’s got his issues, but he seems like he’s little more aware of his needs, or he suffers less than the other characters in getting them met.

It’s funny, I hadn’t really thought of that comparison to some of the other characters. But I think that’s part of the generation that he comes from, which were people who got on with it, you know. They went to World War II, they came back—and he talks about that. He says to Don, “Your generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. You drink because you’re worried about this or that. We drink because it makes us feel good.” And [that attitude] is better than, I don’t know, having your tie buttoned up all the time, or something like that. But I don’t think that makes people any less complicated. I mean, I have people like that in my family. I grew up Irish Catholic in Boston and there was a mentality that was, you know, don’t whinge about it. Just get on with it. You got a problem? Figure it out.

Is the Mad Men era a period that you felt you had any particular affinity for when you were starting on the show?

I almost didn’t consider the period. It’s all there on page: “Makes himself a drink. Has a cigarette. Drinks. It’s 11 a.m. He’s wearing what he’s wearing.” But it’s really a scene where Roger wants someone to do something for him and he doesn’t want them to know why. It’s just the specifics of a particular scene that happen to take place in a certain period [not the underlying emotions]. But yeah, there were certain period things that Matt Weiner wanted, like a formality to Roger, that he would have to remind me of. “Stand up straighter. Don’t be as loose, as contemporarily casual, as you would be in some other instances.” There was definitely some learning of that behavior.

Tell me about working with Jon Hamm.

I’ll tell you what I like about what he does. Everybody looks at him and goes, “Well, Jesus, look at him.” I mean, he’s so good looking and he looks so imposing and you just sort of fall right in as soon as you see him. But the subtlety with which he does all that stuff. I mean, people have appreciated his work, obviously. But really, the very first day of the pilot—it might have been the first scene we shot—I come into his office and he’s got a hangover, so he’s got to take aspirin, do this scene with me, take off his tie, jacket, shirt, reach into the drawer, take out another shirt, which is wrapped in plastic, unwrap it, put it on, button it up, redo his tie, take the aspirin. And I can see (laughs) tiny little beads of sweat, you know, forming, as we go. He had to button his cufflinks or some shit, too.

Which is hard enough to do normally.

Yeah, just in front of the mirror. But here it’s multiple takes so you have to start all over and do it again, and I thought about what Roger appreciates about Don’s character, which is that he does see that sliver, that is not even there all the time, of This isn’t as easy as he makes it look. Don’s a star but nobody knows the full extent—nobody knows the turmoil the guy’s in—but I think Roger sees a little crack in it. And, you know, as an actor it’s a very difficult proposition to show you the emotions of a guy who doesn’t ostensibly have any. I mean, Don has emotions but he doesn’t show them to anybody…. It’s a really difficult thing that Jon is doing. And I think because he looks so good doing it, people think it’s easier, you know, than it is.

Do you have a favorite scene between the two of you?

There was an episode at the end of the first year where it’s Labor Day weekend and I’m trying to get Don to hang around so I can use him as bait. There are the blonde twins in the office and Roger ends up having a heart attack, and I thought, well, you aren’t going to get many opportunities to do all that in one piece of film, so that would probably be the best thing that I had to do. I also thought, that’s why people like this show: because it’s sort of anti-reality TV. It isn’t people tuning in to watch people whose lives are shittier than theirs and to feel better about themselves by watching them. People turn this show on and they’re like, “Holy shit, look at this guy and look at that.” Look at January and Christina—look at everybody. They’re dressed the way they are and they’re smoking and fucking and drinking, and it’s 11 a.m. And, you know, I think, well, God, why can’t my life be like that?

There’s a segment of the audience who seem to see Don and Roger as role models.

Yeah, god. And they say, “It was really like that.” Well, yeah. Maybe.

George Lois, who was one of the great advertising men of the 60s, told me once that if you were doing creative work in advertising then, you didn’t in fact drink at all.

I’m sure. And some people can pull it off and some people can’t.

Even in the show. Roger can, Freddie Munson can’t.

Roger isn’t doing creative stuff. I mean, I guess he has an opinion. But the three-martini lunch—those martinis were a lot smaller then. They were like a little three-sip martini. Today, it’s like carrying a basketball around. They’re huge. What are they—ten, eleven ounces, all vodka? I mean, who can drink that many of those?

I know you haven’t done too many scenes with January Jones, but I’m curious what your experience has been working with her.

She’s great. I watched her do a scene once, in the living room, and I couldn’t tell whether she didn’t know her lines or whether she was—it wasn’t that she didn’t know her lines; it was that, not even moment to moment but second to second, you were like, what is actually going to come out of her mouth? She really does it the hard way, which is she doesn’t figure out, “Oh this is how I’m going to do it.” She does it the way it happens in the second, in the moment, and it sounds clichéd but it’s really something to see. You see it when it’s on film, but to see her actually shoot it is wild.

I’m not quite sure I understand the distinction between watching her shoot it live and watching it on TV.

Because on film, it can look intentional and it looks finished. It’s two-dimensional. When you’re there on the set, it actually manages to suck you into it. You get this sort of boost into the moment because she’s including you in it. You know what I mean? It’s not easy what she does and it’s really exciting to watch.

I love the scene between the two of you where Roger has invited himself over for dinner, gets drunk and then comes onto Betty in the kitchen. Her reaction was this great mix of being flattered, intrigued, scared, not into it. What she did as an actress was so complicated.

It really was, and somebody else might have been more inviting and would have made the scene less surprising because it would have been more like something you’d seen before. Even if she didn’t mean it, she could have been like, “Oh Roger”—you know, more flirty. January really was neutral, so that when he walks in, you get this sort of neutral palate that you’re looking at and you’re going, is she inviting me in? Is she totally disgusted? With Roger being shitfaced at the time, and being Roger, he takes it as an invitation. And then Don comes in and sees that sort of neutrality and takes it as permissiveness, that it was her fault, which of course it wasn’t. But that’s what I’m talking about. She’s actually just living right in that second. It’s really not easy to do. The temptation is to do something that you’ve considered before shooting—and it’s much easier when your ass is hanging out, doing it that way.

Later in the episode, Don gets his revenge by taking Roger out to lunch and getting drunk and full of oysters and then manipulating the situation so that he has to climb twenty flights of stairs, and Roger ends up getting sick in front of a bunch of clients. The 12-year-old boy in me wants to know: how do you throw up on camera?

You get someone to run a tube up your leg. The camera’s on this side and the tube is like a big, thick, clear, plastic one-inch tube that runs up and they tape it to your ear or whatever, and there’s a guy, off camera, with a CO2 canister and a bunch of Campbell’s chunky clam chowder, and he goes, “Okay, so, one, two, three, bend over,” and you go “Eeehhhhh.” There’s no dialogue in that particular shot, so I kind of come in looking green and then bend over and throw up. One, two, three.

Sounds like that demands a certain amount of coordination.

Well, yeah. (Laughs). The first time there isn’t enough velocity, and it goes on for too long and just sort of dribbles out and I’m just waiting—there’s, you know, a gallon. And then they had to change the rug—the practical considerations of this! These guys are going, “You know, yesterday we were blowing up cars and today we’re doing throw up. What a great job we have.” So yeah, the first one came out too slow and too long, and the second one was too, like, projectile or something, but they made it work.

The third time was the charm.

I thought January’s throw up in Don’s brand new Cadillac was really good. They were going to do the tube, but then she just had to hold something in her mouth, which to me usually doesn’t look real because somebody always goes “bleeh” and it doesn’t look like it’s coming from far enough down. God, it feels like forever ago, in talking about it. It feels like we shot this thing five years ago.